Sudo asks for root password instead of user password

[Adam Dorsey]

Binary package hint: sudo

On a fresh install of Natty sudo asks for the (nonexistent) root password instead of the user's password. I Googled thoroughly for this issue and found that this can happen if /apps/gksu/sudo-mode is not checked. I opened gconf-editor and checked this key and it was checked. I unchecked and checked it and it still didn't resolve the issue.

Steps Taken:
Open something that requires root through Gnome. I opened "Additional Drivers".
Do something that requires root in the program. I tried activating the proprietary NVidia drivers.

Expected Behavior:
gksu/gksudo asks for your password, program continues in super-user mode

Observed Behavior:
gksu/gksudo asks for the root password, fails because there is no root password set

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

E.g. "Contol Centre -> Printing"

[matsonfamily (david-matsonfamily)]

I'm running Lubuntu 11.04 x64, fresh install, and I have this issue. I note that my applications in the menu [that need privileges] have a gksu, and changing them to gksudo makes them launch just fine. It's just when I launch apps with gksu that it happens. Changing the application menu entries to use gksudo is not really the fix, though, for if I install a new app with privileges or if I reinstall something like Synaptic, they'll be back to gksu. I've ran $gksudo gksu-properties , and it showed that su was being used, so changed to sudo and rebooted, with no luck. Is this a policy-kit issue? I just mention that because I note that when I run an app with gksudo it comes up with a window asking for *my* passwd and gives a little plus-sign with a polkit entry, but when running apps in my main menu (and those run with gksu, as I said earlier), those come up with a slightly different auth window that asks for the "administrative password", and asks if you want to remember it for the session, or forever in the keyring. As a side note, I installed with the Ubuntu 11.04 x64 Alternate CD, changed the mode to command-line only (forgot the wording), and installed a minimal Ubuntu desktop, then after the install did a $sudo aptitude install lubuntu-desktop , to get Lubuntu.

[Adam Reichold (adamreichold)]

Exactly the same problem here, after using the alternate CD to install Ubuntu 11.04 with the command line only and installing the package lubuntu-desktop afterwards on a memory constrained system, gksu uses the su instead of sudo authentication method by default.

But I was able to solve the problem by running gksu-properties using the user account and not using the root account. So instead of running "gksu gksu-properties" try running "gksu-properties" and change the authentication method. Worked for me.

(IMHO, this has nothing to do with PolicyKit as applications like Synaptic currently lack integration with it. That is the reason they have to use gksu even though PolicyKit is preferred in the first place.)